Episode 14 - Building Science and Systems Thinking

on the build show today I got a special episode  for you guys we're actually podcasting that's right if you're not familiar I've got the  build Show podcast publishing in all the kind of normal audio locations uh iTunes all  that sort of thing but we also publish the video version just like you're seeing here  if you're watching this on YouTube over at build show network.com that's my Network that  has several other contributors besides me so with that being said we got a great  topic I got a gr

eat guest let's get [Music] going all right guys the build Show  podcast we got a great topic for you today we're basically talking about the future of building  science and systems thinking for these little enclosures that we put our bodies and our families  into that we call houses and store them in there for many many hours of the day and when it comes  to this topic have one of the brightest Minds in all of the world not just in the US or Texas  with me and a longtime friend Kristoff Irwin f

rom positive energy Kristoff thank you for being  on the podcast with me today truly my pleasure dude so Kristoff uh before we get into the topic  uh first I want to say uh these guys also have a terrific podcast called the building science  podcast uh there's a 100 plus episodes out there for you to really nerd out if you'd like to um  but you should subscribe to that it's on iTunes and available probably other locations as well but  you've probably seen Kristoff on my YouTube videos his firm h

as been doing work like this for me for  the last about a dozen years now Kristoff which is an HVAC plan and this is uh from my house uh  this is actually I thought I was getting the CD set this is the design development set and what  you're seeing here is all the HVAC work uh for my house uh this is a big plan that these guys put  together we talked about we made some changes and then ultimately we implemented a really top-notch  system at my house under construction yeah you were you were an e

arly adopter you saw this  technology and the promise it could give and I mean this is like a technology right it changes  the outcomes yeah but you guys are more than just manual JS and oh duct design and Equipment  selection yeah so we got a tow hold we found our lift to fight another day Mojo through doing  mechanical designs but we moveed from there into enclosure high performance enclosures and last  couple of years we've been really doing outcome Focus um analyses and reports and we'll tal

k a  little bit about that today but basically um what information flows into the project when is very  impactful all right Kristof with that being said let's Dive Right into this topic this is a big  one uh there's a lot to talk about and uh this is going to be a little bit discussion but it's also  going to be a little bit presentation uh Kristoff spent uh quite a few hours kind of prepping for  this so thank you for doing that my pleasure really was and I think you are the best one to  talk o

n this top topic so tell us uh let's Dive Right In Kristoff yeah so we're going to start out  with building science right so we we we all kind of know what it is and it's important to really  step back and recognize that building science is using architecture and engineering and systems  thinking to design and then build um beautiful buildings that achieve practical outcomes and I  put beautiful buildings in there right because we've heard Jo Ste say over the years that if  it's ugly it's going

to get remodeled with a bulldozzer and that was a big waste of time for  all involved I love so that's why I put beautiful in there but every architect listening appreciates  you adding that in there too right that if it's ugly it's it's not going to last yeah exactly no  matter how nice of the no matter how great the performance is on on that project so the keys of  building science then are architecture engineering and systems thinking and systems thinking is  what we're going to unpack today

we're going to start to and I want to talk about architecture  and engineering so just to kind of put those into little boxes H pun about homes oh I like it so  architecture is the process and the product it's interesting the word architecture is both a and a  verb you know in that sense it's the art and the craft of Designing and constructing buildings  and Engineering that's where I come from is um people say it's problem solving but really it's  opportunity seeking what do we want a home to d

o what do we want to do for it so definition wise  the use of Science and Math to design and make things that achieve practical outcomes right  so like indoor air quality Energy Efficiency um resource efficiency practical outcomes too  not just regular outcomes but outcomes that mean something that to the owner to the O that's  right that's right so if you don't put those on the table early on they might be constrained out  right like no room for a duct system or uh today didn't leave space for

solar panels or battery  system in the home right um water quality is a big thing if you you can leave room or not leave  room for water purification systems in homes but these are complicated uh systems right there's a  lot of uh moving parts pieces oh my goodness right yes excellent yes it would be great if it was just  uh Architects and Engineers it is um Distributors manufacturers Underwriters appraisers you know  your trades it's it just goes on and on and on um so what we're seeing now is

the convergence  of architecture and engineering this is our new swag I should have brought a shirt up here for you  but basically we're saying that um where positive energy stands is this place of using science and  math you know physics engineering to design and build beautiful buildings that have practical  outcomes love it so with that in mind we were um thinking about how to make that happen and  then here's some ideas so what we're seeing now is like a connection of Gears right so imagine 

that all these gears are are you and I right so this is a um engineer talking to Builder and  then we work with Architects we work with our trades we work with our owners we interact with  Distributors manufacturers developers appraisers lenders right goes on and on and on I mean it  it's not out of the question at all that um like that you're a new house right you're going to have  dedicated dehumidification and constant filtration and ventilation it is not out of the question  at all out out

of the question at all that an Health insurer will say oh Matt Risinger and his  family live in a you know a pool of healthy air they're much likely to have negative Health  outcomes and so their insurance should come down mhm right so there's all these things these  interconnected gears and uh interestingly if I'm a stuck gear let's say I'm a distributor and I  look it's 1970 I've been selling this forever I want to keep pretending it's 1970 I'm actually  like a gear with friction that's slowin

g the whole thing down every Builder right now knows exactly  what you're talking about because there's at least five suppliers on my house under construction I'm  like gosh is that going to make it in time for the delivery date that telling my family is the move  in date yeah yeah and I want to be clear I am not bemoaning builders that resist um new practices  and maintain traditional practices they are the guard rails right that that that conservative  mindset and I don't mean politically cons

ervative mean that conservative mindset of like prove to  me that that product is mature and ready to go that's really important that like as mammals  um don't eat the red berries Matt right like that we are wired for traditional practices we're  wired to take cues from our previous generations 100% and at the same time and and when we vary  from that often problems occur exactly a uh you know high high uh High exposure houses with no  overhangs with builders that have never built them before an

d Architects that don't know how  to build now there's an interesting topic that's a whole another podcast yes but the point is  when we vary from traditional architecture types there's a little more engineering that needs to be  absolutely and you know at the largest level right now energy code has radically changed enclosures  you know more airtight higher insulation levels and mechanical systems are responding finally um  but the really important thing to take away from this is like tradition

is important and tradition  needs to evolve right you know you're not doing the same things you were 10 years ago or 20  years ago Y and so um yeah I'll leave it at that so there's these there's these kind of two  big important questions about uh what information Flows In into the process and when so I want to  those of you seeing this I want to talk about when first so there's a couple of things to think about  when when does information come in and have the most impact and the answer is as so

on as possible  right so there's this kind of expression called E4 everyone engaging everything early and this  comes out of what's what's called an architecture integrated design teams integrated project  delivery so this this idea that um so those of you that might not know architecture architectural  project phases usually start with Concept and then they do schematic designs and then they develop  the design that's design development phase and then finally it's construction documents phase 

so that imagine that's Time Project timeline going across early on the ability to achieve  and impact outcomes is very high right very very high you could do anything there's no design  I can make it Net Zero I could make it perfect air quality I can make it one story two story I  can make it cheap I can make it expensive I make it expensive exactly budget is a very important  design constraint and then also early on the cost of changing your outcomes is very low so you have  this beautiful thin

g where like when should all the important outcomes be included in the bucket  and considered early on so by the time you have framed a home right this is why you know when I  say you were advancing early technology adopter on just doing a mechanical design for home usually  the installing contractor and they work hard lot of Integrity a lot of skill they are brought in  late they walk in they look around and they do the best they can given what they've been given  100% that's how 99% of the hou

ses in America are built probably still to this day yep absolutely  and there are a lot of Architects that bring in architect excuse me installing contractors and try  to do design build and the reality there is like when when when I'm working with you on design that  is my service it is not like an ancillary piece yep um so benefits of early planning are reduced  cost potentially streamlined construction reduce stress that's a big one for all of us in the  industry and then of course you get th

e outcomes you want and let me add a real world example of  that first off often I'll get uh a set of plans from someone that didn't include me in the design  process and they tell me hey I want to build this house for X dollars and I said that's great but  you know we need to see what your plans show your your CDs your construction drawings we'll get the  construction drawings we'll get those uh estimated uh some phases bids some estim we present them  with a number and they go oh my gosh you k

now how did it get to this number you know this this  whatever the number is let's say the number is $10 to build this house I my budget was $8 how is this  possibly at $10 well I wasn't involved with any of the process to get up there uh to this point and  if you want to make changes now I think there's only about plus or minus maybe five to 10% you  can do at this point right on this $10 cost which means I could probably build this house for 11 or  12 or 13 more but if you want to go down in c

ost this house with this design could probably only  go down to $9 the cost uh at best and probably more like $9.50 yep yeah uh and if you're trying  to get it down 20% that's just not doable without slicing things off or changing dramatically what  the house looks like so you're you're engaging everything with everyone early did I say that  right you put a fifth one in there everyone means that uh this project could get built much  much differently than how it traditionally gets built and and t

oday you know 2021 here we are  May 2021 the the reality is that the supply chains and the trades are are in turmoil there's  constraints at the Mills you know we all know this and uh you could consider designing such that  you don't need long dimensional Lumber or um super long 2 by10 Rafters or something like that  that's right all right so I'm going to jump in now so there's interesting let me move forward a  little bit here there's an interesting um there's a lot logic to how to change socie

tal systems and  there's this it's called Leverage points it's a it's a beautiful kind of um methodology and I'm  blanking on the name but anyway leverage points it'll come back to me in a minute here but what  they're finding out is that um paradigms so I'm going to start start with like this the Earth  is flat the Earth is the center of the universe right for many many decades possibly Generations  centuries those were considered truths right and they affected everyone's worldviews but they  w

eren't present in people's minds as distorted thinking that was affecting their worldview so  that's one of the most powerful leverage points and that's what you and I as as people who do  a lot of education and advocacy um as part of our you know kind of the side business model or  main business model um that's the important thing is to like try to really help people see their  paradigms and are they accurate like the home can be a health intervention yeah your bedroom can be  a sleep techn tec

hnology right your home can can provide its own utilities energy and water or or  it can be dependent whol dependent or partially dependent so this is the the slide now we're  looking at like a lever like a teeter totter kind of and um the middle of the where the lever  is pivoted is called the fulcrum and then we're trying to move frankly the aec the architectural  engineering and construction industry so we want to move as far from the fulcrum as we can that's  a heavy load on into the SE it's

it's hard hard hard to move that how do we move that then we  move as far from the fulc as we can and that is where we're going to talk about today the two  far out on the end the farthest out is paradigms right but you can't really sell paradigms you  can't keep a business model going maybe you can but that's sort of philosophical like why should  we build what is but we can talk about process process is so closest to the is things closest  to the fulcrum kind of it not it does not have no imp

act has the least impact like products  like if the Toyota Prius if every just everyone bought a Toyota Prius would that save all the  world's problems no no you can't Shop Your Way to to new information flows new processes and new  paradigms so today without further Ado let's talk about processes and we're going to talk about  it kind of in three context enclosure systems um mechanical systems actually I'm going to leave  off the table for now and resilience system we're going to get in part tw

o maybe I come back we  talk about mechanical there's a lot of shared history about Mechanicals there but enclosure  systems now so think about your bedroom right this bedroom is an example of an architect uh a  builder an interior designer creating an indoor environment for you to be in right now what we  think about a lot are the the floors the walls the roof is that where you are you know no you're  like you're above the floor you're below the roof you're next to the walls you're actually liv

ing  in the air you you're living in the space inside so unfortunately no one is really thoughtfully  curating the air that you're living in um not so much right now I mean they're they're making  it the right temperature but are they are they pulling the pollutants out are they filtering are  they ventilating it and then that's not the only invisible thing there so right if you think about  you're looking around your bedroom do you see heat flux no do you um see thermal Comfort no right  do you

see under air quality so these analyses that I'm getting into where we we talk about the  passive system the you know Foundation walls roof Windows Doors and then we use those to design  an indoor environment for humans and it seems a little weird like we're making this little  terrarium or this you know Zoo setting where we're going to put our family but the reality is  that's where they're going to breathe that's where they're going to do their homework that's where  you're going to enjoy Lei

sure Time so passive systems environmental design is one of the four  things that we're really finding as like this synergistic set of enclosure systems mechanical  systems those are fairly wellknown let's talk about them in the context of passive systems which  is what enclosure systems want to think about that's the context in which they fit and their  resilience systems so jumping in we're talking about some of the analyses that can be done to  design a fantastic enclosure so first one is lik

e the climate we can and I'm going to blaze through  these um podcast listeners I'm just going to talk so it's not a big deal if you're watching on bluet  Tobe you're going to see some I'm go through some images so we can do climate analysis look at rain  fall relative humidity air temperature Heating and Cooling degree days we can look at the wind  we can look at outdoor Comfort profiles we can look at different passive strategies uh to keep  you comfortable to to to reduce the energy use and t

hen we can start to think about like kind of  the the the elephant in the room when it comes to enclosures is how does that enclosure interact  with the sun now we know Heating and Cooling loads we'll get to that but radiation coming  through glass so imagine imagine a home where someone has taken the time to look at the window  wall ratio the design of a home I should say to tell you how you could rotate the home and have  lower or higher gains and there's usually a PL place that we call the ra

nge of neutral rotation  it's the minimum but you can go plus or minus in this case 10 to 15 degrees so you know a lot of  homes frankly if they're in a downtown or a city suburb they're going to go on so they face the  street some of them don't and and then what we can do is we can look at Shadows so once we build  these three-dimensional physics-based models we can show the shadows in summer we can show them in  Spring and fall we can show them in Winter we can show them in morning we can show

them at noon we  can show them in the afternoon and we're popping through these right now and then we can help  these people say look these are the trees on your site let's move those Shadows around the  year and decide where you might want to plant a tree right to sh your living room window or  something like that daylighting potential it's huge um you you want to have comfortable light  inside a space you don't want it overlit you don't want glare so we can analyze that and I'm  showing some

pictures of that here we can look at all these different parameters illuminance  glare hours and then here's the picture of the radiation hitting the walls of the building and we  could say plant a deciduous tree right here and we could tell you the size and the height and then  we can look more deeply at the enclosure and we have these we have colorcoded graphical display of  information because not everyone is a nerd right like if I say BTUs per hour per square foot you  know some people like

oh I get it yeah it makes perfect sense that's thermal flux and it's the  density of it so um but if I show you you know um yellow to blue or something like that where  yellow is the highest amount of insulation and blue are the shaded areas oh you can just just  get it right so again business model Innovation combined with with information flow technology  let me interrupt you for one second and tell you uh a personal experience that I've had with  your company that's made a huge difference tha

t's Visual and I think of myself as a nerd but I'm  still a very visual person when we uh were working on Scott Ginder house local architect uh here in  Austin with forgecraft architecture we built his I built his personal house I don't know how long ago  was that now 10 12 years ago on the order of you guys did an analysis of his house and uh heat lost  in the winter time heat gain in the summer and you gave a like a pie chart of of all the different  slices on the pie were different systems in

the house walls um had installation Windows floors  all that and at that moment I finally understood why slab insulation was important because if you  look to the pie chart of heat loss in the winter the majority of the loss in the house was through  the slab in the winter time which meant that most of the BT second second to the windows second to  the windows that's right U which meant that most of the BT or a high percentage of the BTUs needed  to heat that house were because we were losing i

t through the floor and suddenly the light bulb  went off on my head oh that's why you need floor insulation because I saw the visual and because  I I was the I didn't own that house I was the builder of that house and so one quick plug for  positive energy uh if you're a builder watching this you might consider when you have the right  client and you have the budget for for it hiring them to do this for you at least on a house so  that you'll understand it in a much more visual way than just th

e concepts that we're talking  about because as a builder you're intimately aware of every square foot of that house how the  insulation Works what the systems look like what the blower door score ended up what you did to  get all those things uh and so if you have this kind of documentation on a house you can you can  learn so much about building science and now I'm doing insulated slabs on several jobs including my  own house because of that one visual that you gave me 12 years ago so thank yo

u for for being the  Pioneer in this kind of visual information that uh isn't just for nerds but for the rest of the  world as well well thank you're welcome of course you know interestingly that's a fantastic point  to bring in now because in that context at that time that was me doing my heating and cooling  load calculations and it was this is what it is this is the house this is the load it is like  this and what we're talking about today is what if that information could have been brought t

o  the architect and the owner and the Builder early on like while the design is still fluid like in  concept or SD so that's what we have here we have uh oh and by the way just a kind of a systems of  systems that slab Edge insulation means that the slab can only dry into the interior space now  so remember we had some elevated moisture for a few months and we were all scratching our head  and we're were like ah you know can't go through the side cuz XPS okay so we have a slide here  now we're

looking at imagine someone labeling every window in a house and showing you how much  radiation comes in annually and how much the highest density radiation is right so that means  where is the the heat rushing in in the summer and where is the the heat that you want leaving in  the in the winter so in this one you can see that basically three of the windows account for 40%  of the annual radiation in and out holy so big deal right so you can say oh let's talk about  shading let's talk about pot

entially different performance specs on those three Windows that's  right you might use double pan glass somewhere and triple pain elsewhere exactly and it and it's not  built yet that's the thing it's not built it's not priced it might be also that the owner says well  um glass is expensive actually let's just reduce it you know let's reduce it down and now we have  an example here where we can talk about shading this is a two-story building and we have one foot  2ot up to 15t overhangs and we'

re showing the wall you know the walls basically go from yellow with  one foot overhang to blue or green when we put um a much deeper overhang on it then we can go in and  we can talk about all the because we built a model so we can say let's do it to code let's do it to  with code with high performance Windows let's do uh high performance windows and walls let's beef  up the roof and then we can go boom boom boom and just watch the energy go down and find us a  recommendation and what phase of

the architecture are you doing these typically so is this kind  of schematic design or even before that great question we like to get involved during concept um  you know we talked about the ecosystem everybody working together Builders Architects it is  currently not part of the choreography for typical you know I should just OverWatch all this this is  for Custom Homes designed by Architects that are going to be built by a custom home builder right  and maybe some production Builders would wan

t to say I want to have one of these analyzed and then  apply it but yes concept or schematic schem atic if schematic is truly schematic and there's  flexibility I mean there's cultural things a lot of times there'll be a senior architect who  will make a sketch and hand it to his architect project manager be like this is the design do  this and it's fixed you know it's fairly fixed so we want to be involved it's most uh beneficial  for all if we're involved when the design is still fluid so tha

t's the short answer so models built  we can blaze through well this is by the way this is modeling assumptions this is basis of Design  This is like this is all the specs that need to be accounted for and we can start to change them  and we can have a having a builder involved is so important because they can translate this to  construction timelines and costs right and and today boy um my hack goes off to you or my heart  goes out to you uh trying to do budgets it's hard right now it's got to

be pucker it's really hard  so we can look at indoor energy use we can look at energy flows and each one of these graphs can  be analyzed um and they're they're very insightful and you know what we're finding is the Architects  love this because they have not been getting this feedback while there was still time to um react  to it or design knowing it and the owners really love it especially I mean a lot of our um early  adopters of of people like you and I are are rather nerdy owners right they

probably they're  Tech nerds you know for sure and so they're like my house is going to be the ultimate Tech so we  can look at wall different Wall Systems different Roof Systems you know this is what like so we  have now we're looking at a picture of like a conventional enclosure high performance enclosure  and we are seeing all the control layers you know rain air Vapor thermal what we know well and  that is really fantastic that is a fantastic way to make a box that has very functional contr

ol  layers but what was the quality of the daylighting how did it impact glare right how did it impact  energy use um we can look at eui here right so and Architects are asked to report into something  called the architecture 2030 challenge which is to really cut energy use which means during design  what is your energy use going to be so you know we're kind of getting toward the getting into  the meat of it now and toward the end of it so architectural end uses not energy end uses we can  talk

about how much energy is coming through the walls the windows right um let me get to the next  one and and how much can be generated with solar we can look at um Heating and Cooling zones we can  look at shading and massing and affecting those this one is really cool we can look at spatial  thermal Comfort during Design This is mean radiant temperature right I think we've all heard that  60% or so of your body's thermal experience in this room is not the air temperature surrounding  surface temp

erature so we can tell you what's it going to be like in summer what's it going to  be like in Winter that's so cool yeah so we're pretty much at the end now I have a slide here  talking about the power of tradition don't eat the red berries and the summary is that processes  you know to think about your design process as a technology that can be optimized right that's  something that that's the Paradigm that I would like all Builders and all Architects to have and  uh that's the end dude so goo

d Kristoff if uh if people are interested in doing this on a project I  think you guys have a web a spot on your web page that they can go to to see what this would look  like and even what this would cost cost right yeah yeah the we're working these for flat fees  we're experimenting with fees I mean we've done I don't know um hundred of these right now and  we're trying to figure out what does it cost for us to do it what does it cost for us to live to  fight another day and do it again and we

really want a lot of these done we really want to um  influence outcomes during early design phase so yes absolutely they can go to our website they  can just Google I mean just email info positive energy. pro. PR I'll put put a link in whatever is  below uh for that as well Kristoff but uh I didn't want this to sound too much like a commercial what  I'm trying to say is I don't care if we do it I care that this happens yeah and you know I think  ultimately what you and I have talked about for

the last 12 years is that uh planning and spending  money on planning is abnormal in our industry over the last 30 plus years you know normally we give  a four-page set of plans to the HVAC guy and say give me a bid on this uh and all he's got is maybe  a floor plan uh and probably not a lot of specs and then he comes out to the job site and installs  whatever equipment is on the original bid however he sees fit or wherever it fits more likely yeah  and so over the years you and I have both seen

a lot of push back on hey it costs money to plan oh  yeah but if you want a wellb built building that's going to meet your expectations for comfort for  durability for um for beauty for all these things that are the practical functional out comes I  think the point of this podcast that we could boil it all down is look it's really Inspire it's  really important to plan and the better planning the earlier the better the outcome here here  no matter what the outcome needs to be for you uh so Chri

stof thank you for your partnership  for your friendship over the years for being such a thought leader uh in the category and uh  you know you're not just a traditional engineer who's thinking about one piece of the pie you're  thinking about about the entire pie I'm trying to figure out how do I get people to ask me for  the things that I can offer to them in terms of air quality and energy outcomes we're not getting  asked enough yeah we've got a terrific part two where we get into resilience

uh and we're going to  talk a little bit about the snow apocalypse uh and thinking about water and energy resilience um and  I think it's fun to talk about that because I'm also a bit of a mini prepper which is partially  because I have four children at home that depend on me for their life safety and health uh and  so we got some really fun stuff on a part two version of this now part two won't be on YouTube  uh part two will be on the audio podcast and on build show network.com but Kristoff t

hank you  again for joining me for this part one brother um we'll have links to Kristoff and his companies  on the or his company on the um description below but guys big thanks for joining us uh on  this episode from The Rock cool studios here in Austin Texas follow me on Twitter Instagram  otherwise we'll see you next time on the build [Music] show